The right way to save DACA
President Trump has arranged a soft landing for the illegal immigrants benefiting from President Barack Obama’s unconstitutional DACA program. Now it’s up to Congress to craft a solution for this unique category of illegal immigrants — in a way that doesn’t do more harm than good.
The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program might well have ended abruptly Tuesday, by judicial order, since 10 states had threatened to sue if the administration didn’t act — with a deadline of this week. Instead, the nearly 800,000 illegal immigrants will be able to keep their work permits for up to 21/2 more years, as the program is wound down.
Whatever the merits of the individuals involved — illegal immigrants who sneaked across the border or overstayed a visa before age 16 — the DACA program itself is illegal and had to be ended. No less an authority than Obama said in 2011 that enacting what would eventually become DACA “would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”
But as the 2012 election neared, his aides saw that Hispanic voter registration numbers were below the 2008 level and panicked. So to energize Hispanic voters to go to the polls and vote for an administration that had not delivered on its immigration promises, Obama decreed DACA.
The program provides more than just a two-year, renewable exemption from immigration law; it also results in a work permit, Social Security number, driver’s licenses, access to the Earned Income Tax Credit welfare program and more.
The question now is, What will Congress do with the six-month grace period before DACA permits start expiring?
The DACAs aren’t just the most sympathetic group of illegal immigrants; they’re a special case. Though almost all are now in their 20s and 30s, they grew up here and have developed their identities as Americans. Some didn’t even know they were illegal aliens until they went to get a driver’s license in high school.
So an amnesty for them — and only for them — can be justified as a prudent act of mercy. There’s a lot of support for amnestying the DACAs, even among immigration hawks like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).
But any measure considered by Congress would be harmful unless it addressed the two drawbacks of any amnesty.
One, all amnesties encourage future illegal immigration — by sending the message abroad that crime pays, as it were — and they set in motion future increases in legal immigration, as relatives of the amnesty recipients take advantage of the chain-migration provisions of our current immigration program.
That’s why any legislative solution to this problem must include both enforcement measures and legal immigration cuts. Though the President has made a border wall a centerpiece of his enforcement strategy, he already has all the authority he needs from Congress to build one; he only needs some extra funding, which in and of itself would be an insufficient tradeoff for legalizing DACA.
The chief item the President needs from Congress regarding enforcement is to require universal use of the EVerify program. This is a free, online system that enables employers to check the information they already have to collect from a new hire (name, age, authorization to work) and to ensure he is telling the truth about who he is.
Last year, roughly half of all new hires were screened through the system, but use of the system is still voluntary. Only Congress can make it mandatory, which would be the single most important step toward weakening the magnet of jobs that drew the parents of the DACAs here in the first place.
The second element Congress must incorporate in any DACA amnesty is abolition of the immigration categories that permit chain migration of an endless procession of relatives. Fully two-thirds of the million legal immigrants we take in each year are selected because they already have relatives here.
After an amnesty for the DACAs, they would be able to bring in their relatives, including the parents who put them in this difficult position in the first place. Cotton’s RAISE Act would, among other things, focus family immigration only on husbands, wives and little kids, ensuring that any DACA amnesty would not create a future surge of immigration.
A stand-alone DACA amnesty would, at least, be legal. But it would be a mistake. These young people must be granted formal permission to stay in a way that limits the harmful fallout of amnesty.